Chapter 32 Katy Knows
POV: Carly
Presentation day.
Three weeks of ingredients and rehearsals and late night sessions and it had finally arrived and Carly was sitting at her desk reading her note cards for the fourth time in a row without absorbing a single word on them.
It wasn't the presentation making her hands shake.
Well. It wasn't only the presentation.
Two weeks had passed since the festival. Two weeks of navigating whatever this thing between her and Niko was on campus where everything had eyes and ears and nothing stayed private for long. Two weeks of toning down the banter in class and acting like her body didn't know exactly where he was in every room they shared. Two weeks of Tommy's arm around her in the cafeteria and Niko's eyes on the back of her head and her pretending not to feel either of those things simultaneously.
She had managed.
Barely but she had managed.
She underlined something on her note card that didn't need underlining and told herself today was just another day.
"Ah. The wicked witch is alive after all." A voice appeared directly beside her left ear. "Shame."
Carly closed her eyes briefly before turning around.
Katy was in the seat behind her, leaning forward with both arms crossed on the desk and that specific smirk she deployed when she already knew something and was enjoying the gap between her knowing it and you knowing that she knew it.
"What's that supposed to mean." Carly said flatly.
Katy shrugged. "Don't take it personally. I just never see you anymore."
"Why do you care." Carly said.
"I don't." Katy said. "But I have eyes. And I've noticed a pattern."
Carly turned back to her note cards. "Good for you."
"You're never in the room." Katy continued like Carly hadn't spoken. "And when you do come back it's at the oddest hours. Last Tuesday it was after eleven. Wednesday before that it was nearly midnight."
Carly's pen stilled on the card.
She thought she had been more discreet than that.
"Your point." She said without turning around.
Katy leaned forward until her voice was low enough that only Carly could hear it. "Are you doing drugs?"
Carly turned around so fast she nearly knocked the desk over. "No! Are you insane?"
"Relax." Katy raised both hands. "It was just an assumption."
"It was a terrible assumption and you can't just go around saying things like that to people."
"Sheesh." Katy rolled her eyes. "It's not like I accused you of sleeping with a teacher. Take the stick out of your ass every once in a while, you'll feel better."
Carly turned back to her cards and said nothing.
Katy drummed her fingers on the desk. "Studying then." She said dryly. "That's your cover."
"It's not a cover." Carly said. "It's the truth."
"Mhmm." Katy twirled a strand of hair between her fingers. "You've been hanging out with a vampire."
Carly's entire body went still.
She let out a laugh that came out about three tones too high. "I'm sorry?"
"I can smell him on you." Katy said it quietly and matter of factly. "Has been for weeks. I just didn't say anything because honestly it's more fun to watch you think you're getting away with it."
Carly turned slowly. "That is the most absurd thing you've ever said to me. And you've said a lot of absurd things."
"Is it?" Katy's smirk didn't move. "You're a terrible liar by the way. Your left eye twitches."
"My eye does not twitch."
"It really does." Katy said pleasantly.
Carly opened her mouth.
Katy leaned forward. "Look I'm not judging you. If anything I'm impressed. I didn't think you had it in you to break that many rules at once." She paused. "So who is he."
"There is no he." Carly said.
"Sure." Katy said. "And I'm a Franciscan nun."
"Can you just drop it." Carly hissed.
"I'll drop it." Katy said. "Eventually." She sat back. "But you should seriously work on the poker face in the meantime. The eye thing is really giving you away."
Before Carly could respond the door opened and Niko walked in on the bell.
Their eyes met across the classroom for approximately two seconds. Nothing dramatic. Just that specific awareness they had developed for each other that existed regardless of what either of them was doing about it.
Carly turned back to her note cards.
Katy said absolutely nothing.
Which was somehow worse than anything she could have said.
Niko slid into the seat beside her and the clean soapy scent of him arrived with him and she kept her eyes forward and her spine straight and did not react to any of it.
"You alright?" He asked, low enough that it was just for her.
"Fine." She said. "Just nervous about presenting."
"Don't be." He said. "We've rehearsed it. You could do this in your sleep."
She exhaled. "I hate presenting. Even when I know the material. All the attention makes me anxious."
"You. Carly McPherson." He said with that dry amusement. "Anxious about the spotlight."
She shoved him in the shoulder without thinking about it.
He absorbed it and the corner of his mouth lifted.
"If it helps." He said, dropping his voice lower. "The attention will be on both of us. You're not going through it alone." A pause. "And if you feel yourself about to pass out, just imagine everyone in the room without their clothes on."
She laughed. Actually laughed, quiet and real, and felt him register it beside her.
She caught Katy watching them from behind and straightened immediately and faced forward.
Niko noticed. She felt him notice. He didn't say anything about it which she also noticed and filed away under the growing list of things she was not examining today.
Professor Swanson called the room to attention and Carly focused on her note cards and told herself she was going to get through the next forty minutes without falling apart.
She almost believed it.
POV: Katy
She watched the whole thing.
The shove. The laugh. The way Carly straightened up the moment she remembered where she was. The way Niko didn't react to any of it on the outside while his jaw told a completely different story.
Katy had been watching people her entire life. It was one of the advantages of being what she was and one of the few she actually enjoyed. Humans and supernatural creatures alike thought they were so good at hiding things. They thought if they kept their voices low and their faces careful they were invisible.
They were never invisible.
She turned to her notebook and clicked her pen.
Niko Monroeson.
Of course it was Niko Monroeson.
She had put it together two weeks ago when Carly came back at eleven thirty smelling like cigarette smoke and that specific brand of cold that came off vampire skin after hours outside. She had been waiting ever since to see if Carly would say anything on her own.
Carly was not going to say anything on her own.
Katy was fine with that. She was patient when the situation called for it and this situation very much called for it.
She looked at the back of Carly's head. At the perfect blonde curls and the rigid posture and the hand that was gripping her pen slightly harder than note taking required.
Then she looked at Niko. At the sketchbook open in his lap that he was not drawing in. At the way his attention appeared to be on Professor Swanson while his awareness was entirely somewhere else.
She clicked her pen again.
This was going to be very interesting.
She was going to need a front row seat.
Author's Note:
Katy already knew. She has known for two weeks and has been sitting on it like a cat with a secret and I am obsessed with her for it.